


Shipping, Inc.

by Lillian



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Denial of Feelings, Fluff, Happy Ending, Humor, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2019-11-14 05:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18046304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lillian/pseuds/Lillian
Summary: Peter discovers the existence of superhero fanfiction in general and of Ironspider fic in particular. Then he starts reading it. So far everything could be chalked up to ordinary curiosity, if only Peter didn't feel moved to write some himself.And once you're at the point where you're sneaking into your mentor's bedroom so that you can correctly describe it in your next fic, anything can happen. Including falling in love for real.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The starker fic-writing fandom in my fic is deliberately very different from its real world counterpart. As far as I know, every starker fic premise I mention in this has never been written and if you notice any similarity with real fic that's unintentional. The last thing I want to do is disparage any real fic or fic trend, as far as I'm concerned you guys are all awesome and should continue doing your own thing, whatever that is.

It's Ned's fault Peter starts writing fanfic.

Usually, Peter has no problem getting in trouble on his own, but for once it isn't him. Maybe it isn't Ned either, it's just circumstances.

Here's how the idea first germinates: they're stuck on an endless line at Peter's second favorite sandwich joint, and Ned's on his phone. Times like these, Ned has the bad habit of stumbling on appetite-ruining topics and sharing them with Peter. Zit-popping videos, herbarium art made out of frog road kill, instructions on how to give a handjob to a dolphin, Ned can unearth it all. It's a talent. With the wisdom of previous experience, Peter's resolutely turned away from the screen of Ned's phone.

"This is so weird... who even comes up with this stuff?" says Ned, in his "I have fallen into another weird Internet hole and I'm dragging you in with me" voice.

"Don't tell me about it, Ned, I mean it," says Peter, his stare practically boring a hole into a stack of waxed sandwich paper bags on the other side of the counter. He's so close. One of these babies and its steaming contents are almost within his grasp. Please, let him make it. Let goodness prevail today.

"It's nothing that bad, it's just funny," Ned answers dismissively. 

"That's what you said last time," accuses Peter. He seriously considers clapping his hand over Ned's mouth and keeping it there until they get to the checkout. 

"It's about Spider-Man and Iron Man."

Peter's sneakers squeak a little on the linoleum with how fast he turns.

"What about Spider-Man and Mr. Stark?" he asks breathlessly. It's been two weeks since he refused Mr. Stark's offer to join the Avengers, two weeks that have felt so surreal Peter might have doubted everything after their first meeting even happened if it wasn't for the suit Mr. Stark returned and the folded paper bag note currently squirreled away under Peter's mattress where May old-fashionedly believed teenage boys kept their porn and so would never look.

"You know how some superhero fans make stuff, like action figures, sweaters..."

"Yeah, yeah," Peter interrupts. It doesn't sound so bad, so far. Fan crafts are cool in Peter's book. The day he vanity googled himself and found those Spider-Man plushies was the first time he felt like he might one day be a real superhero. It was silly, but it really made him feel like he might really belong among them. But this can't be all it is and he's still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"...and some of them write stories. Like, fictionalized accounts of the Avengers forming, of their greatest battles, even of them just hanging out." Ned continues, looking at Peter expectantly.

"So there are stories about Spider-Man too? About... Spider-Man meeting Iron Man?"

"Yeah, _a lot_ of them. I guess when Spider-Man showed up in Germany wearing a suit that screamed Stark tech right at the time the Avengers were in the middle of their big break-up, people took notice. Same with that ferry, eh, incident. You won't believe how much speculation there is, people coming up with all kinds of backgrounds for Spider-Man and-"

A peevish cough from behind lets them know the line has moved and causes Peter to realize how intently he's been listening to Ned's ramble. People write stories about him and Mr. Stark hanging out, imagine that. Peter tries to wrap his mind around that fact as he shuffles forward. If only it were true in real life.

Next to him Ned leans in and continues conspiratorially.

"And here's the kicker, a big slice of those stories is porn. It's hilarious stuff."

And here it is, the gross-out, right on time. Peter makes a face. In a far corner of his mind the news that there are people out there imagining him and _Mr. Stark_ having sex spins and spins like the lone red sock in a washing machine full of whites, leaking color very, very slowly.

"Please tell me you haven't been reading porn about m- _Spider-Man_ right next to me," Peter hisses back.

"No! Of course not! It's not really about... Spider-Man. None of these people know who Spider-Man is so it's all about some orphaned acrobat trying to avenge his murdered circus family, or an eight-eyed spider mutant, or a rising wrestling star, stuff like that."

As they shuffle another two feet towards their goal Ned launches into a lengthy explanation of the spider mutant porn and its inventive use of the fact that spiders can apparently taste with their legs. Because of course.

🕷 🕷 🕷

By the time Peter's out on patrol that night, all his metaphorical mental laundry had enough time to turn a nice, vivid, Pepto-Bismol shade of pink.

He thinks he should have expected something like this from his newfound fame. He did, in a way.

A while before the bite, Peter followed a link to an Iron Man fan discord. The result was educational. He joined the conversation, very enthusiastically, and immediately got a helpful nudge towards the discord's downloadable supplementary materials.

Which included every leaked sex tape featuring Mr. Stark's, every stack of snapshots of his public nudity incidents, every skinny-dipping round caught on camera, every time Mr. Stark looked especially hot in general, and even a grainy video of the 1994 incident in which Mr. Stark apparently took a leak into a burning garbage can. Or so the description advertised. Peter didn't check for himself. There was even a separate collection of porn featuring Mr. Stark lookalikes.

Peter beat a hastier retreat than ever before in his life, and he'd had to leg it away from some tenacious bullies in his time.

Now, he's sitting cross-legged on a chilly rooftop after a quick swing around the block to make sure nobody's getting murdered while Peter googles porn of himself.

He doesn't really want to look at it, just to know what's out there. Given the fact that there aren't any actual sex tapes of Peter floating around, before Ned dropped that little bomb today Peter would have expected something like a couple of lurid porn flicks featuring actors that look nothing like him, with titles like Spider-Manmeat XXX: Bigger & Hairier. 

He suppresses the urge to scan his surroundings nervously as he types, but the feeling of doing something illicit fades quickly, drowned by curiosity.

He finds what he's looking for right away and it's... okay, it's not as weird as he imagined. Trust Ned to have zeroed in on the freakiest stuff right off the bat. Most of the superhero porn seems to be on a dedicated site called "The Fucking A" where it's all helpfully tagged. Peter scans the stories quickly.

There's a sizeable chunk about Spider-Man, even though he's far from an Avenger. Peter guesses it's because he's one of the few superheroes whose identities aren't public knowledge, so it's fun for people to piece together a back story based on the little known about him.

He gets mashed with other superheroes too (mashing is the term for wanting to imagine two superheroes in romantic or sexual situations, from mashing two dolls together. Peter's _all_ up on the lingo already.). The most popular Spider-man mashes are with Black Widow because of their shared spider theme and, of course, with Mr. Stark.

Peter bites his lip and winces a little behind the mask, embarrassed, but still filters results so he's only getting the stories about the Ironspider mash.

Fifteen minutes later he has to concede Ned was right, this is like reading about an entirely different person. In this fic Spider-Man is the result of a SI experiment with gamma radiation gone wrong because a spider snuck into the experimental chamber. Which, plausible, given what actually happened to Peter and the Hulk. Mr. Stark feels responsible for Spider-man, which, you know, also plausible, and then suddenly there's making out in a lab and Peter backclicks.

In this one Spider-man's a Russian ballet dancer, and Mr. Stark's dropping Russian endearments like every other word. Someone clearly went crazy with google translate. Mr. Stark takes Peter out for dinner after being enchanted by his performance in Giselle aaaaand, they're making out in a private room at the restaurant. Jesus Christ, these people work fast.

In the next one Peter is a high-class _gigolo_ out to seduce Mr. Stark away from Ms. Potts because a business competitor pays him to, but then he falls for Mr. Stark for real. Apparently, the incident of Peter picking up a bunch of Berlin girls to fly them around for fun has had a big impact on his characterization and most people think he's a huge flirt and a ladies’ man, like Mr. Stark.

In the one after that Mr. Stark asks poor college student Spider-Man to pay off the suit in blowjobs! Peter's first thought is that Mr. Stark would never, but he's had the rape fantasy convo a long time ago after he found his grandma's stack of bodice rippers during a particularly stultifying visit which actually brought them closer together since Peter's grandma was never the milk and cookies kind of gran. So whatever, he just moves on.

In the next one Spider-man's an ambitious, cocky Italian-American New Yorker who tracks down Mr. Stark and pesters him for a job. They proceed to bond over their shared heritage before, what else, making out at a literal cockfight. 

Eventually, Peter puts away his phone and resumes his patrol. His mind keeps going back to what he found though. It doesn't really bother him that people got so much about him wrong, it's actually a relief. But they also get a lot wrong about Mr. Stark, and that seems strange since Peter's impression of the man is the same as when he only knew him from interviews, press conferences and public appearances. What you see with Mr. Stark is what you get, in Peter's admittedly limited experience.

As he webs up a couple of opportunistic burglars, Peter wonders if the real story would even be of interest to any of the Ironspider writers. If five brief meetings and a bit of one-sided texting would be nearly exciting enough to capture their imaginations. Probably not. There is way more to Peter's fictional relationship with Mr. Stark than it is in real life, no matter how much he wants it to be otherwise.

...

Not that he wants to make out with Mr. Stark in various unorthodox locations, of course, he would just like it if they really were close. Like real friends, brothers-in-arms, fellow superheroes or whatever. It all sounds corny and childish even in his head, and he would never admit it out loud to Mr. Stark, but there was more to Peter's desperation to impress him than the desire to join the Avengers.

Not too long ago, Peter was a skinny, asthmatic nerd with coke-bottle-bottom glasses he could never hope to replace with contacts because he had an allergy to everything. Mr. Stark would have been his hero even if Iron Man didn't save him that time at Stark Expo.

Since then nothing's shaken his _ironclad_ conviction that there's nothing more impressive than saving and improving the world with the power of your mind. Nothing cooler than raising yourself to the fighting level of gods with an armor you designed and built yourself.

And when Peter finally, unbelievably had a chance to stand at Mr. Stark's side, he blew it. Mr. Stark genuinely offered him a spot on the team, he's almost certain of that now, and Peter not only refused, he implied that the offer was so ridiculous it could only have been a test on Mr. Stark's part. It was as good as insulting Mr. Stark over the olive branch he offered, the apology Peter now realizes he must have made in the form of giving Peter everything he could have ever wanted on a silver platter. When he went home and saw the reports of the big Stark press conference and the engagement announcement he felt like diving under the couch to die of embarrassment.

He couldn't even apologize without making things even more awkward. He couldn't take it back either because Mr. Stark praised him for his maturity and because Peter really didn't feel ready. Except they could have worked something out, signed Peter on as an Avenger in training or something, if only he hadn't opened his big mouth.

So the only thing left to do was leave Happy less frequent and hopefully less childish reports in an attempt to make himself seem like a reliable potential ally in Mr. Stark's eyes. So far there's only been radio silence in response except for that time Happy texted him to say not to worry, he didn't seriously hurt that armed robber, it was just a concussion after all.

Not that if there were scores of strangers writing stories about himself and Mr. Stark that accurately reflected their relationship Peter's situation would be any better, but it would be... it would be like that plushy, an acknowledgement that he's worth at least that much.

He's so deep in thought he doesn't realize how tired he is before he almost smacks through the corner window of an office while making a turn. Right, home it is.

He swings back as close as he dares, then makes his way to his building more surreptitiously. He crawls up to his window and sneaks in. He even manages to get changed right before May raps on the door to tell him to turn in already.

When the flat goes as quiet as it gets when you have super--hearing, Peter wiggles around onto his belly and yawns into the pillow. He has some homework to do still but that's what commute is for in Spider-Man's glamorous world. His last sleepy thought is that he should write it all out, show those amateurs at Fucking A how it's done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot of ideas for this one but I also have many doubts because the concept is so cracky. I honestly can't tell whether I'm hitting the right tone, or even if I'm in the same ballpark, if this is entertaining at all. But I figured the only way to know if I have a stinker on my hands before I churn out 10 000 words and change of it is to post the 1st part and see how it goes, so here it is. I hope you enjoyed/sorry you didn't, as applicable.


	2. Chapter 2

By this stage in his superhero slash high schooler career Peter's developed a great morning routine. He can take a shower, brush, keep May from noticing fading injuries, choke down pieces of toast, and tug on the right number of season-appropriate clothes while still snoozing. By the time he hits the street his healing factor has managed to mitigate the effects of chronic lack of sleep, and Peter's ready to tackle a new day.

A busy new day, like all of Peter's days lately.

Still, there are some things no amount of planning can make up for. Out in the open Peter's senses keep going haywire, a strain of sound out of the whole cacophony around him suddenly maddening like a pebble at the bottom of his shoe, or the flash of color in the crowd derailing his train of thought because there's something about the red cap or yellow umbrella in the distance that not quite but almost trips up Peter's internal alarm. He usually deals with it by retreating deeper into his thoughts, or losing himself in conversation with Ned or May. He functions still, he can run out of the way of a car or register traffic lights on autopilot, he's still safe. He just does it while he's semi-deliberately zoning out.

It's very easy, in that state, to get what Ben used to call a "mind worm". Like ear worms but even more persistent, it was their name for intrusive thoughts, unpleasant memories you couldn't avoid thinking about, gnawing worries. Occasionally just inexplicable preoccupations. Today, Peter's mind worm revolves around fanfiction.

He thinks about it in between solving math problems on the subway and while managing school with the usual goal of maximum productivity coupled with minimum visibility. _The efficiency quotient equals the sum of education and positive social interaction divided by public humiliation_ and _hey, imagine if someone had heard Mr. Stark's remark about band practice on the ferry, everyone would know I'm in high school. And a geek. I wonder how different the fic would have been?_ at the same time.

At lunch break Peter barricades himself in a cubicle in the restroom and skims over the new Ironspider posts on Fucking A. There's a hugely bravoed work-in-progress that posted a new chapter only minutes before - probably an author on their lunch break - and Peter kind of becomes engrossed in that. It's a 60s AU in which Iron Man is a dapper, bowler-hat wearing spy whose primary weapon is his umbrella, and Spider-Man's his alluring but deadly accomplice in a signature yellow jumpsuit. _A onesie_ , Mr. Stark would have called it. There's absolutely no making out but a lot of drinking of champagne and flirting, which is why Peter reads through that one until his legs cramp and he has to cram his sandwich into his cheeks hamster-style and munch industriously on the way to his next class.

He gets through the rest of the day on autopilot and then it's home, sweet home. 

There's a brief period before May gets off work when crime isn't exactly booming and Peter can unwind. Usually he uses the respite to start on dinner - pasta, ketchup and the first can he grabs from the kitchen cupboard is his specialty, to spread out his homework on the kitchen table, or to tinker with one of his projects.

Today, he chooses dinner because they can't afford take out for the second time this week, not to mention the cost of ingredients, if May decides to cook again. A rummage through the cupboard produces a can of chickpeas which are actually Peter's favorite, so he starts whistling as he works.

He used to tweak his shooters or the suit too, before, but now there's no need for that. The new shooters run sweet as anything, and the suit fits like a glove and wears like elephant skin. Not that Peter would know how durable elephant skin is. Dragon hide might be a better comparison?

He raises his feet to the corner of the table and idly balances on the back legs of the chair while the pot bubbles cozily on the stove. Just as idly, he imagines himself in a dragon-hide suit, something iridescent and scaly, forged by the master weaponsmith Mr. Stark from the skin of a dragon he slew himself, and...

Okay, this is weird, this has to stop. Peter lets his heels drop decisively on the rug and pulls his laptop close. There's only one thing for it. He needs to get this thing out of his system. He'll grasp the mind worm with a firm hand and pluck it out of... ugh, that metaphor's been _stretched_ far enough already in Peter's opinion.

He expels the squishy mental images out of his mind as he gets ready to write. He opens notepad and freezes with his fingers over the keyboard. What should he put down? Not some weird Lord of the Rings knock off, that's for sure. The thought of his and Mr. Stark's first meeting comes unbidden once more. Without thinking, Peter starts hitting the keys. He writes in the first person, the words just pouring out. It's so easy, just like narrating a video, and he has a lot of experience with those under his belt.

He starts with the Lamborghini out front, the dirty look from Happy as Peter - or the unnamed Spider-Man in the story - slows down to gawk at it. In reality Happy glared in the general direction of everyone in the small crowd of Peter's neighbors gathered a respectful distance from the blinding lime-green wonder that was Mr. Stark's car, and not at Peter specifically, but there's this thing called artistic license and this other thing called establishing tension so, you know, the neighbors will have to live with being omitted.

Then he continues with a hopefully unobtrusive infodump. As Spider-Man navigates his ordinary Queens apartment building, passing trash bags dumped in front of doors and other teenagers sitting with their phones to their ears on front mats, the reader gets a feeling of what Spider-Man's life is like. At least, that's the idea. Peter sketches in some details about his own day, the math test, the lucky run he had dumpster diving, and then it's time for Mr. Stark's grand entrance.

By then Peter's actually hitting his stride and having fun, so of course he hits a slump. Different ways to describe Mr. Stark pop up and do when it comes to describing Mr. Stark. He doubts he can manage a fic description, which run the gamut from poetically longing to unashamedly lustful.

It's just... everybody knows what Mr. Stark looks like and the effect he has on people. Peter might as well embed any picture of the man and be done with it. But then he'd still have to find a way to describe his and May's reaction to Mr. Stark, which was pretty much the expected cliché.

Basically, Mr. Stark arrived in Peter's home with a shiner, in grey digs that would have made anybody else look washed out, and immediately charmed the pants off Peter's aunt. Not literally, thank fuck. But it took her whole days before she remembered she didn't actually like him.

Peter himself felt like he did the first time he sprung off a building. It was all the same, the dizzying sensation, the lightning-fast changes, the addictive, a little scary excitement. When Mr. Stark delivered him back into his old life Peter went kind of crazy trying to get this cocktail of feelings back and just like with May, it took him a while to get his feet back on the ground. He guesses Mr. Stark just has that effect on people. It's a cold comfort but it's better than nothing, and it helps a little with not taking the rejection personally.

It feels weird now to try and describe dispassionately the memory of Mr. Stark pulling the knowledge of Peter's secret identity like a rabbit out of a hat before drawing Peter into a new world with the same casual ease, as if he recruited a dozen new Avengers every week.

Mr. Stark flipping the lock on Peter's bedroom door, a decisive click.

Mr. Stark spitting out May's pastry, not hiding that he'd been schmoozing, allowing Peter in on the secret.

Mr. Stark wandering around the room, touching Peter's things, circling Peter, cutting through his pathetic attempt at deflection.

Mr. Stark sitting on his bed. Their conversation about responsibility.

It occurs to Peter that if this were a fanfic, he and Mr. Stark would have been making out on Peter's bed with May just behind the door in two seconds flat.

He blushes violently at the thought, all the blood in Peter's body rising to the skin in a defensive attempt to make him fade into his red hoodie.

So no, no making out in this story.

He wraps the fic up with Mr. Stark's invitation to Berlin, just after Peter webs up his hand to the doorknob. Registering at Fucking A takes a couple of minutes, it takes another few to paste and tag the story and so on.

Peter's all too conscious of the fact that May will be barging in, all hunger and chattiness, any minute now, so he hurries through the process. He hears the key scrape against the lock and hastily hits post without checking the whole thing one last time. 

"Hey, hon," greets May, smiling at him. Her smile is almost as bright as it was a year ago. Peter beams back, relieved for more than one reason. May seems to take in the lack of dirty, empty dishes on the table. "You must be starving. You didn't have to wait for me, you know."

"It's fine, May, I had something to do," Peter says, firmly closing the lid and moving the laptop out of the way.

"Let me make a salad. You should eat greens sometimes, and before you ask, no, M&Ms don't count. You won't believe what happened at work today! So this guy comes in wearing a bunny suit, and-"

🕷 🕷 🕷

Peter decides he won't check on the fic until the next day. He still has patrol and he can't afford to make a habit out of getting distracted.

As early as he dares he makes a show out of yawning for May, and retreats into his room. May's easily bored by herself and exhausted on weekdays as a rule, so it's less than fifteen minutes later when Peter hears the door to her own bedroom open and close. Ears pricked, he waits until the weary sigh she always lets out as she lies back underneath the covers. Only then does he fish out the suit from the bottom of his backpack and changes into it in the dark. 

"Good evening, Peter," Karen's already familiar voice says as soon as he pulls the mask on. "I have been monitoring police frequencies as usual. There are a couple of promising reports."

And so it goes.

🕷 🕷 🕷

Peter helps a girl who sprained her ankle hobble over to her car and trips a purse-snatcher. An old lady asks him to go with her to the ATM and then presses a tenner on him, ignoring his protestations that there's no need because apparently he looks like he needs a square meal. Peter must exude some kind of energy field that makes old ladies want to fatten him up. Best not to enter any cottages made out of candy in the foreseeable future.

After that there's a whole lot of nothing.

Peter swings about the city desultorily, telling himself that no matter how quiet things get he won't find himself a convenient rooftop to check how his story is doing.

Instead, he hangs upside down from a lamppost for a while, and then takes turns making faces with a little kid through a high-rise living room window. The kid does something Peter would have considered anatomically impossible with his nostrils and Peter concedes defeat, taking off into the night with one last wave. It’s late enough that he can call it a night, so he crouches on a handy fire escape for his usual report.

"Hey, Happy," he speaks into his phone. "Nothing major went down tonight. No injuries or property damage," he adds quickly, because that's the part Happy drilled into him was the only important one. "That's it and, eh, Spider-Man out, I guess."

It's a little spare even for Peter's more restrained reports of late, but Happy will probably be only too, ha-ha, happy about that. He doesn't want to know about the off color joke the girl with the sprain told Peter, or that Peter spent five minutes inspecting the sidewalk for the purse-snatcher's contacts which got knocked out when he fell. Sometimes, Peter's tempted to share stuff like that just to fuck with Happy, but then he reminds himself he's trying to project maturity and that Happy would likely complain about him to Mr. Stark at the first opportunity.

He manages to get home on the right side of 2am. May's quiet snoring comes out through the wall, a comforting sound.

Peter says bye to Karen, carefully rolls the suit into a neat roll and puts it away for tomorrow, resting the backpack within reach of the bed. The tenner he sticks into his tip jar with the 62 dollars and 35 cents already there. That's the college fund figured out.

While he pretends he's not avoiding going to bed, his phone seems to call to him from the night stand like in one of those old movies complete with slow close-ups and dramatic music. Pick me up, Peteeeer, you know you want to, he imagines it crowing.

And technically, it _is_ the next day already.

Peter flops on the mattress on his front with a quiet oomph and reaches impatiently for the phone. 

His little fic is still on the first page of results and it has... way more bravos than he expected, and nearly as many comments. Peter perks right up. Feeling a lot less anxious, he clicks on the comments button and scrolls down.

Wow, there's some variety in there.

 _Like Spider-Man could be a high schooler_ reads one comment.

 _Leave it alone, it's probably some kid that wants to bone Tony Stark self-inserting_ , goes another.

Peter frowns. How rude. And so totally off base.

_TS would have been riding an Audi, and he doesn't bring Hogan just anywhere these days, didn't you do **any** research?_

Well, he did come over in a Lamborghini and he did bring Happy, so there.

_I loved your Tony voice, very in character!_

Peter should hope so, given that Mr. Stark actually said all that stuff.

The next comment is a lot longer.

_This was so deliciously wrong. I love how Spider-Man notices nothing, but it's clear to the reader Tony's acting really inappropriate. First, he's grooming Spider-Man's guardian, a vulnerable, recently bereaved woman with no immediate family support. Then the moment Tony's in Spider-Man's room, he starts breaking down boundaries! He locks himself with a teenager **in the teenager's bedroom** , he starts pawing at his dirty clothes and he makes the teenager move so he can **sit next to him on his bed**! And if that isn't enough, he uses his status to convince the star-struck teenager to lie to his aunt and let Tony whisk him out of the country on false pretenses! He immediately establishes a conspiracy of lies in which it's Mr. Stark and Spider-Man vs. Spider-Man's guardian! I can't wait to see where you go with this, I got chills, it's so creepy!_

What?! Holy shit, what?!! What is wrong with these people?!! Oh, no, wait, wait, this is clearly a problem of different context and skewed expectations. Because this is supposed to be a mash fic and not reality, people are interpreting Tony's actions in an entirely wrong way. Phew.

Still, Peter better not include the fact Mr. Stark bought him new bedroom furniture in the next chapter.

He moves onto the next comment.

_Oh, I like this very much! I'm a sucker for slow burn and this looks like it fits the bill. I especially love that Spider-Man makes his own web fluid. Someone so young inventing something like this, Tony must be really impressed. And his little speech about superhero responsibility was wonderful, especially if you look at it from Tony's perspective. Here he is, in the middle of the Avengers breaking up because his teammates refuse to accept any responsibility on principle, and this really young kid just gets it. The responsibility to help and the responsibility for failing to help are one the same thing and it's a superhero's burden to take on both. Otherwise he's just an arrogant douche who thinks he's so much better than everyone else that he's above accountability._

Peter blinks down at the screen a couple of times. He never thought about it from this angle. He wanted to impress Mr. Stark, but it was obvious Mr. Stark contacted Peter for his powers so that was what Peter tried to demonstrate would be useful. Maybe he should have leant more on his brain? Although it's not like there was much time for that anyway.

And concerning Captain Rogers... Peter doesn't know what to think about him. Part of him can't believe the Avengers have split for good. On the other hand, the rift is definitely more serious than Peter imagined when he entered that fight at the airport. Perhaps it's more serious than Mr. Stark believed at the time. Peter got more banged up in that fight than during the previous six months when he fought "real" criminals. The Captain definitely didn't go easy on him. Peter still isn't sure what happened to Colonel Rhodes, but he must have been hurt bad.

The screen's gone black while Peter's been lost in thought. He sighs and lets the phone drop softly from his grip to the carpet before hugging his pillow.

He's not sure what he expected when he decided to plaster his first meeting with Mr. Stark out there for all the Internet to dissect, but it wasn't this. It feels like so much stuff went over his head, and now this is helping put it into perspective. At the same time none of these people were there and this is all just amusement to them, so it's questionable how much value there could be in their insights. If he's not listening to the commenter who decided to cast Peter as the Lolita in a sordid abuse story, why should he take the rest of them seriously?

The answer is, because he wants to. He wants there to be some magic formula, some detail he overlooked that will allow him to figure out what’s going on next time something like the offer to join the Avengers happens, so that he can make the perfect choice. Not just the right choice or the mature choice, the actual best one. 

If there is a next time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 60s Au fic comes from the 60s Avengers show. Intro here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2PdaP8m6oI I only _wish_ someone would write a starker fic based on it.
> 
> This probably doesn't need saying, but none of the characters or fic commenters in this fic are my mouthpiece. So if a commenter thinks Steve is a poophead or Tony - a moustache-twirling villain, that's not a reflection of my real opinions. Just so we're clear, in Civil War I was Team Slash. I feel like we won decisively.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A month ago I imagined I was going to get this fic to the Snap before Endgame came out. Optimistic of me. It's shaping up to be a real monster.

Writing fanfic about himself is almost cheating, in a way. Peter doesn't have to come up with a plot or motivation, just rely on his memory, which has been working at 110% since the bite just like everything else.

He jots down chapter 2 in the back of his history notebook, on the clear side of a sale slip, on a page torn off the kitchen calendar. Written by hand it somehow seems more private, like he's doing it for himself and not for public consumption. Like a diary entry, or a letter he has no intention to post.

The fight comes first, and it should be a piece of cake to describe, what with the video he has of it. It was too chaotic though. Peter lost track of Mr. Stark for long stretches, didn't even know what some of the others, like Black Widow, were doing. Then Peter smacked into the giant dude's arm like a bug splattering onto a windshield and that was it for him.

Here's how he remembers the aftermath:

Peter lies quietly on the landing strip where Mr. Stark left him until he feels better. Gradually, the queasiness diminishes, his head stops spinning, his ribs start aching dully instead of stabbing him with every breath.

He feels almost fine by the time his ears catch the wail of sirens, far off, and his first thought is that it's not fair, he's fine, Mr.' Stark shouldn't have called them.

He's so preoccupied with what to tell them, how to stop them from removing his mask, so focused on the distant noises, and would Mr. Stark be there, that he notices the nondescript black car only when the wheels screech to a stop an arm's reach from Peter's side. Happy's round pink face rises over the driver-side window like an angry moon.

"At least I don't have to carry you," he says instead of a greeting while Peter coaxes his body to sit up and waits for the dark spots to clear out of his vision. "Get in."

Peter does, in the back, where he can lie down on the cool leather.

"Are you okay?" asks Happy. "He said you were okay."

"Who is the ambulance for?"

He can see the knuckles of Happy's right hand turn white on the steering wheel.

"Never you mind," Happy grumbles.

"Is Mr. Stark all right?"

If he isn't, if he got hurt after Peter went out of commission so stupidly, Peter doesn't know what he'll do. It all went wrong so quickly. But then Happy puts a quick end to that train of thought.

"Yeah. Yeah, he's fine."

The ride back to Berlin's over surprisingly quickly - Peter thinks he might have dozed off part way. He jostles into awareness when the car lurches to a stop right in front of the hotel entrance. Happy tells him to get changed in the backseat before climbing out and disappearing through the revolving door into the lobby. Peter keeps glancing nervously at the darkened windows, but nobody takes exception to the car parked right in front of a busy hotel while Peter fumbles his way into a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and sneakers from his bag, which he finds jammed under the seat. His phone's rolling in there too, which is good because the last Peter saw it, it was webbed to a container, ready to shoot Peter's glorious entrance into battle.

By the time he's done the concussion seems gone and Peter feels ravenous more than anything. Inside, he expects Happy to have gone up to his room already, but instead he's waiting in ambush in the lobby. He ushers Peter into an elevator and hovers like the world's grumpiest mother-hen until Peter's safely into his room.

"If you feel any worse, come and get me or tell the AI in the suit," Happy rattles off, and the look in his eyes says "you better not get any worse, I have enough to worry about as it is".

Then he pointedly closes the door from the outside and leaves Peter alone in his extravagantly outsized room once more, if you can call something so large and swanky "a room". A suite, maybe?

Suite or not it feels too tight to contain him all of a sudden. He feels weird, jittery with the crash of adrenaline and about to literally climb the walls. He’s also so hungry he can _smell_ the contents of his mini-fridge through its closed door and their sealed packaging. The nuts in particular are making his mouth water. And it doesn't matter that he told himself it would be impolite to eat too much of the overpriced European candy, he can't help himself now. He tears into a bag of almonds and wolves it down in what feels like seconds, then moves on to the next one.

By the third he's slowed down enough so that he can lie down on the bed and throw chocolate-glazed hazelnuts in the air to catch with his mouth. He lands them every time, having spider reflexes is awesome. While crunching, he wonders if Mr. Stark will call him anytime soon. He must have told Happy to come and get him, but perhaps he'd like to personally talk to Peter as well. He probably has a lot to deal with in the wake of the fight - property damage, UN briefings, maybe making sure whoever got hurt is fine. Peter's only vaguely aware of that part of being a superhero, his own post-fight obligations usually consisting of "sorry about the mess!" or "don't do this again, okay?!" shouted over his shoulder as he sped away before the cops got there.

Well, if Mr. Stark calls, Peter will be ready.

He continues munching for a while, and then as soon as his sense of smell decides it can afford to pay attention to stuff other than food, he realizes he _really_ needs a shower.

He takes one while watching a news channel on his fancy bathroom TV. There's little about the Avengers and nothing about the airport, it's all still about James Barnes - the guy with the metal arm - and the UN summit.

Dressed and dried, he passes some time by rambling at the camera since he can't ramble at May, Ned or Mr. Stark himself. He always gets louder when he's excited, so when Happy interrupts to tell him to keep it down it's no surprise.

Peter should really keep it down, because who knows who else is listening, one floor up or down.

He should probably really go to bed so that he's ready for their flight back tomorrow.

Except that would be boring.

Worse than that, it would be wasting a rare opportunity. It's his first time out of the US and there's a whole new city out there to explore. Mr. Stark will probably collect the suit until their next outing, and who knows when that will be. Peter barely got to test it, really.

Plus he feels kind of cheated. Sure, he's disappointed they didn't convince Captain America to re-think going rogue or whatever it is he's doing, because the issues the Avengers were having only got deeper and someone got hurt bad enough to warrant calling an ambulance, but he's also bummed out because if they'd succeeded, right now Peter would probably be celebrating with the Avengers, hanging out with Mr. Stark and dropping heavy hints about what an asset he'd be to the team. Okay, he probably wouldn't muster up the nerve to do the last one, but still.

Now that none of that's happening, he just wants a consolation prize.

So he slips on the suit in what feels like two seconds flat and exits via the balcony, taking care not to swing in front of any lighted windows until he gets away from the hotel.

And then it's like, where does he start?

For a while he just lets the onslaught of information wash over him. The very air smells different here, even the rhythm of shooting and swinging is off. He poses on top of a bunch of historical sights, taking pictures like any other tourist. Well, maybe not like _any_ other tourist. He stops for a breather next to an open-air club, one thing leads to another and he ends up taking a bunch of people (ok, mostly pretty girls) for rides until he's so sleepy the thought of a nice spider hammock under an out-of-the-way eave becomes way too attractive.

It's all he can do to make his way back on autopilot, crawl into bed, and hibernate. Although the regeneration means he's fresh as a cucumber when Happy knocks on the door three hours later.

His good mood lasts right up until Happy sees the morning papers. Who still reads papers anyway? The stupid hotel must be giving out free copies because nobody actually wants to buy them, and ruining Peter's day in the process.

He munches forlornly on a croissant while Happy nips away to rat him out to Mr. Stark. Peter just knows it. All of a sudden his little excursion last night doesn't seem like such a great idea. He's not quite sure how much he fucked-up, but in the cold light of morning and with the sight of his slick new suit staring at him from the pages of half a dozen newspapers around the room, he suspects that in Mr. Stark's estimation it's "a lot".

Eventually Happy clomps back over like a cantankerous rhino and says, "finish up here, we gotta go."

"Wait, we're flying out now?! But I didn't- I thought we were gonna fly tonight, I told May - that's my aunt by the way - and I told her we were flying back tonight because that's what Mr. Stark told me, are you sure you didn't misunderstand, because-"

"We're not catching a flight," Happy squeezes out through clenched teeth. He's also slowly turning pinker and puffier, like he's in the middle of having an allergic reaction to something. To Peter, probably. "We're moving hotels. _Mr. Stark_ wants to bring you back himself in case you have another bright idea on the way, like to try and jump out of the plane to take selfies with the birds."

"Oh. But do we have to move hotels just for a few hours? Can't we just go sight-seeing instead? Happy? _Happy!_ Happy, wait!"

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It turns out it's not just for a few hours. Mr. Stark won't be able to fly stateside for at least one more day, so Peter's stuck in Germany. He calls May from his _penthouse_ suite to feed her an explanation that's at least 40% true.

"All right, I appreciate that he wants to return you personally," May says, like Peter's a lost dog Mr. Stark's bringing along on his lunch break. "But are you sure being so close to this whole Avengers' spat isn't dangerous?"

"No no no, I'm not close at all," protests Peter, even making the appropriate hand gestures, even though May can't see him. "That’s in Leipzig, which is hundreds and hundreds of miles away."

"I thought it was in Austria?"

"I'm really super safe here, May," he says loudly. He really is, actually. He's not only safe, he's _secured_. None of the windows even open. Peter checked. "I got my homework with me and everything."

"And you better do all of it. Love you. Call me if anything else changes."

"I will! Love you too!"

He ends the call on the sound of May's fond sigh and he's left all alone yet again with nothing to do but slowly sink into a carpet so plush it's like disguised quicksand. Peter's ankle-deep already.

He ambles up the stairs and into the loft bedroom containing a bed as big as Peter's bedroom, and two doors which probably lead to a bathroom equipped with minimum two TVs and a closet big enough to house Narnia. He still checks, because there’s nothing else to do and despite the fact Peter's worried about where he stands with Mr. Stark right now, his capacity to marvel at hotel rooms hasn't been exhausted.

Yup, door number one leads to a bathroom, surprisingly devoid of TVs but containing a huuuuge marble bathtub. Peter's so trying out that one later.

He decides he might as well put away his bag in the Narnia-closet. He opens the second door without looking and... flings his bag smack into an Iron Man armor.

It strikes it in the knees area, bouncing off like an unfortunate shot during a pillow-fight.

The suit comes to life, its eyes burning red like stoked embers.

"Sentry mode in progress," it announces in its robotic voice. "No threats detected."

The light dims very, very slowly, like a promise the suit isn't really off.

Peter breathes out a very small, very quiet "whoa" and he can swear the eye-lights flicker back on for a fraction of a second. It’s likely a reaction to the sound, but to Peter it almost looks like the suit is winking.

Mr. Stark left him with one of his armors. Not even an Iron Legion suit, but a fully fledged copy of Mr. Stark's current mark. Is it just in case? Does Happy have one trailing after him too? It might be because he doesn't trust Peter alone, but then again it only turned on when Peter disturbed it.

Either way it's so cool Peter seriously wonders if he isn't dreaming. He reaches towards it - he can't help but reach towards it - and lets his fingers trail over the chest plate. The metal is warmer than it should be, vibrating slightly under his fingertips. Peter lays his whole palm against it, just to the side of the reactor, his outstretched thumb framing it, and it's like touching a living thing, or the container of one, a beehive or a coral shell.

He catches himself when he starts _rubbing_ the metal - which is weird? Definitely weird, right? - and retracts his hand reluctantly. It's just, it's the one thing he regretted not doing after Mr. Stark saved him at the expo. The memory's fuzzy now at the edges, like a child's pastel drawing, but Peter distinctly remembers Mr. Stark's rough, nearly painful hand on his helmeted head when Uncle Ben smuggled Peter close for an autograph, and then later the red and gold twirl of him as he threw out "nice job, kid" and sped away. He remembers how sorry he was he didn't get to touch the suit, imagined himself clinging to its heel, the comic little tail of Mr. Stark's comet.

He leaves the closet door open just enough so he can see the armor from the bed, his own personal friendly monster watching over his sleep.

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One moment he's fast asleep, the next his eyes are wide open in the dark. He doesn't wonder where he is, he knows, but he does wonder what woke him. The spider sense is quiet, and there's no red glow from the suit.

A muted clatter wafts over the railing.

Peter sits up in bed. There's no creak of springs, barely even a rustle from the covers as he untangles them from his legs. For some reason though, he doesn't feel threatened.

Down below there's another muffled clink, a metal object hitting the surface of the console by the door, judging by the direction of the sound.

Then someone curses, very quietly and very, very distinctly to Peter's sharp ears.

He'd know that voice anywhere.

All of a sudden he can hear his heart beat rabbit-quick in his temples, maddeningly out of tune with Mr. Stark's heavy thread on the stairs.

Mr. Stark's in his room in the middle of the night and Peter has no idea what to say. He's just sitting there cross-legged in his clearance boxers, with what feels like dried drool on his cheek, fidgeting while Mr. Stark trudges over to the padded bench at the foot of the bed, sits down and... starts pulling off his shoes. Peter hears the first one drop to the floor, then a pained grunt from Mr. Stark as he wrestles with the other one, and there's definitely been some misunderstanding.

"Um, Mr. Stark, you know I'm here, right?" Peter says, more loudly than he'd intended, utterly certain Mr. Stark does not, in fact, know that Peter's around.

The faint outline that is Mr. Stark twists with uncharacteristic lack of grace followed by a visible lock in muscles that broadcasts injury. Peter's seriously worried now. Mr. Stark seemed okay last time Peter saw him, definitely fine enough to subdue Peter in his disorientated fit without flinching like he's pulled a whole collection of muscles.

"It's me. I mean, it's Peter. Parker," Mr. Stark snorts at that, which is reassuring. "Let me get the light."

He flops on his back to reach for the bedside table, fumbling, when Mr. Stark claps and the overhead lights turn on. They glare down on Peter frozen mid-wriggle over the messy sheets and on Mr. Stark's own weary figure, his wilting hair, the shiner blooming over his right eye, the checkerboard of bruises framed by the unbuttoned sides of his shirt and his loosened tie.

For a second Mr. Stark stares at Peter like he's a stranger, blank and unsettling. Then he shakes his head like he's trying to clear it and Peter realizes Mr. Stark's just dead tired.

"Sorry, kid, I forgot I told Happy to move you to my suite," he tells Peter, looking at him and half-looking through him, like some part of Mr. Stark is still far away. "I thought I wouldn't need to use it anymore."

Peter's thoughts chase each other through his mind like overexcited dogs. This is Mr. Stark's suite? Did he plan not to sleep that night? Is something wrong or was he just very busy? Should Peter apologize for that newspaper thing now or later? Did Mr. Stark forget the suit here to? Was he battered so bad during the fight and Peter didn't notice? The worry wins out over the anxiousness not to pry.

"Do those hurt a lot, Mr. Stark? Do you need me to get you anything? Happy said you were fine, but you- Were you at the hospital?"

He slides over the sheets on his butt, closer to Mr. Stark, knowing he looks childishly eager and unable to stop himself all the same.

Mr. Stark doesn't seem to mind though. He seems too exhausted to mind much of anything. He rubs at his eyes and flinches.

"Yeah, I was at the hospital."

"Didn't they wanna keep you overnight?"

Mr. Stark smiles mirthlessly at that.

"They had better things to do than prod at me. Rhodey's been in surgery. He's going to be okay." He tacks on the last part, more like a promise than a reassurance.

"I didn't know. I'm so sorry," Peter says. The sentiment seems awfully inadequate. He wishes he could help somehow.

"Not your fault, kid."

Peter bites his lip, not asking any of the questions hovering on the tip of his tongue. Prying would only make Mr. Stark worry even more.

"Are these really painful?" Peter asks instead, eyes flicking over the exposed parts of Mr. Stark. God, even his knuckles seem busted, swollen and raw. It's another subject Peter should probably avoid, but he can't leave this one alone, not with Mr. Stark's bruises popping out under the harsh light. "I couldn't tell you were hurt."

Mr. Stark flashes him the same grim smile again. A much too grown-up smile that Peter hates to admit he doesn't understand.

"You were busy counting your own lumps. Was it a good haul? Enough to play pinball on them?"

"I was actually just disoriented."

"Sure, sure," Mr. Stark says indulgently.

Peter opens his mouth to argue when Mr. Stark gets up abruptly and picks up his sneaker.

"I'm off to find a bed I can collapse into. You go back to sleep," he tells Peter, pointing the tip of the shoe at him, mock-threatening. "And don't think you're off the hook about that joyride you took last night. We'll talk about it tomorrow, all right?"

"You don't have to leave, Mr. Stark. I mean, it's your room, I can go sleep on the couch. And I'm sorry about the Chancellor thing, but in my defense you didn't _say_ not to do that, so."

Mr. Stark harrumphs and pushes on Peter's shoulder until Peter keels over/down. The touch is shocking-hot, completely unexpected and Peter's weird-ass senses zero in on it like a kitten on a laser light. He can feel the texture of Mr. Stark's calluses through his threadbare t-shirt, even the edge of his thumbnail before Mr. Stark shifts his hold minutely.

"I see I'll have to lawyer-proof the next draft on what you are and aren't allowed to do," he says, straight-faced. He pauses to look down on Peter, who's trying so hard to keep his sensory issues from weirding out Mr. Stark that he's even breathing shallowly. This is so not the same as touching the armor. "Ah, who cares, I'm not good at giving the third degree. I'll take care of everything, Parker, just don't worry about it."

"Okay, all right, I won't," Peter babbles, licking his lips nervously. "Only I'm not entirely sure why I should have worried about it in the first place?"

"Because of the hordes of newly minted German fans clamoring for a ride on the spidercoaster. I'm told phones in SI's PR department have been ringing off the hook," Mr. Stark replies, deadpan. He pats Peter on the shoulder and straightens up. "Now go back to sleep or your alluring aunt will think I took you partying all night. When I actually took you to a Fight Club meeting at a disused airport."

Mr. Stark even whistles a little as he descends the stairs, his back ramrod straight, even his suit looking less creased than when he came in.

🕷 🕷 🕷

This is what happens, and Peter can't post it. He pretty much knows what will happen now. Someone will home in on an alternative interpretation of a detail or word, and then Peter will spend another week's stretch obsessing over it, entertaining ideas he's not sure he's comfortable with. Even just writing this helped Peter realize to what extent Mr. Stark deflected his concern and his questions, and that he masked his exhaustion so deftly Peter still couldn't pinpoint the exact moment it happened.

That and people might complain that he and Mr. Stark didn't start making out right away on Peter's unmade bed. Like, Peter's aware that from a masher's point of view he just wasted a perfectly fine sex scene set-up. It will probably disappoint his readers, if he ever does post the chapter.

The Internet actually has a term for fic like that, fic you don't post because you're not ready, or because it's too personal. Shoebox fic. Fic you let sit in a dark corner somewhere until you make your mind up about it one way or another.

Peter stashes his own shoebox fic next to Mr. Stark's bag-note in his not-porn cache.

Then he types out what happened on the ride after the flight back home. On that, Mr. Stark was his usual charming self from the very beginning. He quipped in his funny t-shirt and expensive suit, he played along with Peter's semi-stealthy attempt to film him, he was carelessly generous like only he could be, and even Peter's blunder with the hug was the kind of embarrassing he doesn't mind strangers reading about. So what, he was a bit too eager to hug Tony Stark, who wouldn't be?

He puts that one up and abandons his phone for the whole evening, not even looking up at the chimes when the bravos and comments start rolling in.


	4. Chapter 4

Peter decides to try a radical new approach to dealing with this fic-writing mess. Not worrying about it. It helps that his last chapter got much less concerning responses, it was mostly "nooooo, hug him!" and ""I hate this, I hate you, I hate these emotional illiterates so much ugh". It's cool to hear from people who loved his fic unreservedly.

After the first couple of days, when attention dwindles out, Peter turns off notifications and logs out of his account. He doesn't mean to be rude, he plans to answer any comments that accumulate while he's MIA eventually, he just needs a little break.

What makes it even easier is that Ned's moved on by now, so there's no one to bring up fic in real life. Nobody knows about the fic Peter wrote and anyway it's camouflaged, buried under a couple of dozen other fics and sinking deeper into obscurity every day. No one would even notice if Peter deleted it now.

He doesn't delete it.

After school Ned, MJ and Peter are sort of hanging out in that brief moment when everyone's collected their bags and no one is hurrying anywhere and someone is definitely about to suggest an activity at a place, or more likely, inactivity at a place.

MJ shifts her weight from one foot to the other sulkily, a sure sign she's about to strain herself by acting sociable, and Ned gives Peter a hopelessly conspicuous elbow in the ribs and says loudly "You didn't forget you promised to help me with my Lego replica of Hogwarts, right? It needs _hours and hours_ of _really intense_ work, so I hope you're ready."

MJ frowns, looks disdainful, then circles right back to her default expression of affected boredom, which probably means she's not offended.

"Whatever," she says, "I swear I'm just racking up the cool points around you losers. Let me know when you wanna do something more fun, like scraping the gunk around a bathtub drain or listening to elevator music."

She pushes past Peter and down the hallway and Peter feels like a tool. He and Ned both agreed that widening their circle of friends by a whopping 50% was worth navigating MJ's quirks, but the fact that Ned knows about Peter's alter ego and MJ doesn't means they still need alone time now and again.

"You think she bought it?" Ned asks guiltily.

"I doubt it."

"Damn. I knew I should have gone with something more plausible. Who would do a Lego replica of Hogwarts in 2019? That's so overdone."

"I doubt that was what tipped her off, Ned. Anyway, what's up?"

Ned perks up instantly.

"I have this great idea I can't talk about here," he announces in the kind of stage whisper that actually carries further than his normal volume. He makes a show of checking the coast before wiggling his eyebrows significantly. Peter takes a moment to thank his luck that Ned is so bad at acting secretive that no one could possibly believe he's trying to keep a big secret. "It's you-know-what stuff. I'm not sure how long I can keep it in, so, your place or mine?"

"Mine," says Peter, starting to get infected by Ned's enthusiasm like usual. "May's working late, and Karen told me that nothing in her programming would compel her to inform Friday if I let you talk to her, since you already know about me."

Ned looks like he just learned he won the lottery.

🕷 🕷 🕷

The relaying of Ned's brilliant idea gets delayed somewhat because Ned's fascinated with Karen, and Peter's fascinated with the show. it turns out Karen holds a grudge over Ned breaking the baby monitor protocol, which she expresses by acting snooty at him while Ned pretty much slobbers all over her.

"Oh, God, oh, God, I have so many questions! Do you have a manual?" Ned asks, arms flailing.

"No," says Karen.

"But I can ask you stuff about how you work, right?"

"No."

"Do you have any cool emergency protocols, like in case of a zombie invasion?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss sensitive security information."

"Aha, this means you do have a zombie contingency protocol! Tell me all about it!"

"No."

"Hey, is it true that you have self-evolving capabilities? Does that extend to secondary priorities? Can I introduce a new point of interest, like, say, Lego, and see how that develops?"

"Certainly not."

"But what if-"

Peter munches on fish crackers while watching them bicker. It's weird seeing someone else with Spider-Man's face on, especially with Ned windmiling his arms and gesturing wildly while he's trying to sweet-talk Karen. The mask looks surprisingly expressive from the outside, the eyes reacting to every minute change of the wearer's mood. Peter wonders why Mr. Stark made it like this. It didn't help make Peter appear more intimidating, or maintain the advantage of surprise. The only thing it was good for was broadcasting more of Peter's personality, and surely _that_ can't have been Mr. Stark's objective.

"Do I get to hear your great plan sometime this century?" Peter asks loudly when he judges it's time to intervene before Karen flips out and really contacts Friday.

"Oh, right! I completely forgot," Ned says, reluctantly pulling the mask off.

He lays it down reverently on the backrest between them. The eyes dim until it looks just like an ordinary piece of fabric. _Spider-man's left the building_ , Peter thinks.

"Okay, so," Ned begins. "Remember when we talked about how The Daily Bugle has it in for you and how it's so unfair you can't defend yourself? Then it hit me, what's stopping you? Everyone and their donkey's been posting Spider-man videos online. You could do one too, share your side of the story. Take the narrative into your own pedipalps, and yes, I had to google that. I'm sure Karen here can help you cover your tracks, and I can lend a hand if you need me to."

Peter considers the suggestion. It might actually be a good idea, if he can come up with a message that won't be twisted easily. Trust me, I'm definitely not a bad guy won't cut it.

"It could work," he says eventually.

Ned throws his fist in the air and preens. "It will work! As soon as I read it I knew... uh-oh."

The fish cracker Peter's about to swallow sails down the wrong pipe. He coughs hard, eyeballing a contrite Ned between fits and struggling through several shortened breaths.

"You got the idea from fic!" Peter accuses as soon as he can rasp out the words. So much for Ned being over the fic business.

"Nononono. No. I got it from a regular conversation! It just came up!"

Peter stares at Ned. Ned fidgets. Ned breaks out in sweat. He keeps it up for five seconds more before he crumbles.

"Okay, it was on a fan discord! People were talking about the most romantic ways Spider-Man could confess to his love interest, and a video shot on top of the Empire State Building was number two!"

Peter just groans and buries his face in the couch cushions.

"I'm sorry," Ned says again, contrite. "This stuff's just so fascinating now that I know it's _you_."

Peter can sympathize. Boy, can he sympathize.

"It's ok, you just caught me by surprise," Peter's answer is muffled against felt. When he twists enough to look at Ned out of one eye the Spider-man mask stares accusingly at him. But it's not like he can fault Ned for being curious when Peter himself went even further into the rabbit hole. He sighs. "What was number one?"

"That was writing it in web in huge letters somewhere public. And mid-swing was number three."

"At least if I ever manage to land a date as Spider-man, I can scour the Internet for ideas," Peter smiles weakly.

Ned reaches over for a fish cracker. "Yeah, and you can start from the bottom of the list so there's room for improvement. The Internet is a great and terrible resource and you ignore it at your own peril. We can totally make that old geezer at the Bugle swallow his own stogy."

Peter tries to fuse his face with the couch and wonders how much easier it would have been to be Spider-man if he was trying to do it before the Internet was a thing.

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In the next few days Peter finds himself planning his future video addresses and researching media training tips in between reading fic, which is becoming a sort of a mental chewing gum for him. There's a couple of fics that update practically every day - it's awe-inspiring how productive some people are, Peter doesn't write that quick and he's basically doing a "what I did on my summer vacation" essay - and Peter doesn't miss a chapter.

In the first fic Spider-man is a renegade werespider who eschewed his clan's traditions of secrecy to try and help people, while Mr. Stark comes from a long line of werespider hunters. There's no making-out so far, the writer thankfully dragging out the "you're my enemy, we can't!" angst.

In the second Spider-man and Black Widow are Mr. Stark's pet tarantulas. "NO BESTIALITY!!!" blare out the tags, and not that Peter minds but he has to wonder why anyone would write a mash fic about a spider and a human if they were so against bestiality. It seems like creating unnecessary obstacles for themselves, if you ask Peter. Anyway, the fic's cute so far, except for the part about molting. That made Peter so grateful he didn't get stuck with any of the really out there spider attributes. Just imagine May entering his bedroom to kick his ass out of bed and discovering he's in the middle of shedding his exoskeleton. Or not, not imagining is also good.

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"Hey, Happy, it's Spider-man! Kinda late to check-in again, sorry. No injuries or property damage to report today either."

...

"Hey, Happy. Nothing to report, I'm all write, I mean - right. Bye!"

...

"Hey, Happy, patrol went fine."

...

"Hey, all's good... You don't mind if I message you next time, right?"

...

"ni&pd 2n8 bb 2moro"

🕷 🕷 🕷

Peter's grocery shopping and also texting back and forth with Ned regarding their biology project. Testing the bacterial growth in reused plastic bottles seemed like a decent idea that could be realized on their budget aka half a shoestring, until Ned suggested that Peter should be the one to actually drink from the things. And sure, Peter probably won't catch anything so it makes sense for him to take one for the team, but it's still revolting to think about so he slows down some on the texting front. He also returns the juice carton he picked up back to the shelf.

When his phone rings he decides it's just Ned calling to make sure Peter's sold, so he picks up without bothering to decipher the caller ID through the cracked screen.

"Yeah, yeah, operation backwash is a go," he says, holding the phone between his cheek and shoulder as he browses through bags of rice. "And this is the last time we're calling it that if I'm gonna be the only one swallowing biologically hazardous material."

"I'm not sure if I called way too late or just in time," Mr. Stark's wry voice fills Peter's ear. In an act of extraordinary self-possession, Peter manages not to drop the phone. "What have _you_ been doing with your time, Parker?"

For the first time in his life Peter's glad he has his more immediate social awkwardness to fall back on instead of having to address not becoming an Avenger or Mr. Stark's radio silence.

"Oh, hey, no, that's just about this school project I'm doing with my fr-"

"Yeah, amusing as that greeting was, I meant in general," Mr. Stark cuts him off. Peter can hear the echo of his brisk footsteps, the faint hum of machinery in the background, and… the roar of a cooling system. He wonders where Mr. Stark’s calling from. "Happy has been complaining to me about your attitude. He's under the impression you and him are locked in some teenager vs. authority figure struggle."

"What?" Peter blinks, curiosity forgotten. "I've no idea what you're talking about."

"Apparently, you've started leaving shorter and shorter reports in a power play to try and get Happy to call you back. Because he cunningly saw through your ploy, eventually you resorted to messaging him meaningless gibberish," Mr. Stark explains. He somehow sounds equally irritated and entertained.

"That's insane! I never did-"

"Happy's not fluent in chatspeak," there's silence on the other side of the line if you don't count the scrape-scrape of Mr. Stark rubbing his beard. "He's also not wrong that this is a departure from your usual style. Is there a reason you stopped appraising Happy on every single thing you do and asking for laundry directions for the suit?"

Peter bites the inside of his lip so he doesn't blurt out that it wasn't _Happy_ he wanted to appraise about his days. But Mr. Stark made it perfectly clear all of that was just an unpleasant chore to dump on Happy, possibly because Mr. Stark too found it funny to rile him up a little.

 _It finally sank in that it wasn't doing me any good_ is the truth. But Peter can't say that because there's implied reproach to it, and he doesn't want to insinuate he thinks Mr. Stark owed him something. Peter messed up, Peter got needy, Mr. Stark just discreetly put him in his place. No reason to revisit any of it.

"Because last time you went quiet, it turned out you were busy playing with fire," Mr. Stark prompts when Peter keeps silent for too long.

"Yeah, and I pulled your bacon out of it," Peter bites his lip again, slightly freaked out by his own audacity, so he backpedals before Mr. Stark has time to react. "It isn’t anything like that this time. I just have a lot on my plate and it doesn't make sense to bother Happy with details every time when all he cares about is if I fucked up."

The silence following stretches like taffy in the heat.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this, but Happy lives for these reports. The one with the hamster in the drainpipe? Instant classic. The sour face is how he reacts to fun," Mr. Stark says breezily, and Peter relaxes somewhat. What he sounds next though, sounds carefully neutral. "Don't hesitate to call any time you need back-up, repairs or... anything else. You showed what you're capable of, but all of us need someone to watch our back sometimes. You did it for me, so I hope you'll allow me to return the favor if you need it. All right?"

"All right," Peter agrees. As if he wouldn’t. There's a weird sting in his throat and he's fervently glad they didn't do this convo in person.

"See you around, kid."

Mr. Stark hangs up first. Peter stands in the aisle staring at his phone for so long a shop assistant sidles up and starts clearing his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's my currently very empty [tumblr](https://lale-bair.tumblr.com). Come and say hi or leave a ficlet prompt. I can't promise I'm going to write it but I'm on the lookout for palate cleansers in between other updates.


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